While school sports hazing is being taken more seriously than in the days when I first started covering it, violence and sexual assault in the presumed name of building team unity is still a big problem, in part because there are still plenty of adults unwilling to take the necessary steps to stamp it out. (That’s in part because hazing as a form of initiation is so ingrained, and if you don’t believe me, here is a list of hazing deaths – since 1838.)

More...

For the second straight week, there will be no game played under Friday night lights for the Wood Memorial High School football team. On Tuesday, East Gibson School Corporation Superintendent Dr. Henry Brewster announced the team would forfeit its Week 2 tilt against Tecumseh High School as the school corporation and Oakland City Police Department investigates allegations of hazing against the past and present members of the football team.

More...

Starting this week, about 20 million students will be arriving on college campuses for the fall semester, and while classrooms fill up, fraternities, sports teams and clubs of all kinds will open their rolls to new students and, inevitably, to initiation rites that can include hazing. Not just embarrassing or humiliating pranks, but physical abuse and serious physical peril, even death.

More...

A new state law aimed at ending hazing that went into effect July 25 extends the consequences of hazing down to 7th to 12th graders.

The law was drafted in the wake of an alleged incident at Conestoga High School where football players were accused of sodomizing a freshman player with a broomstick. Previously, the state anti-hazing law applied only to college students not those in secondary schools.

More...

A University of Chicago (U. of C.) student is suing the Illinois chapter and national organization of the Phi Delta Theta fraternity.

More...

COOPER CITY, Fla. - The parent of a South Florida high school student complained to local authorities after she says her son was the victim of a hazing incident.

The parent said her son, a member of the Cooper City High School baseball team, was hazed by teammates during a road trip to a tournament in Altamonte Springs the week of March 21-25.

According to the Broward Sheriff's Office report, the student told his mother that five teammates came into his room and pulled his underwear down before he was able to fight them off.

More...

Pennsylvania's anti-hazing law got an update last week, making it a misdemeanor crime for middle and high school students in addition to those at colleges at universities.

To better understand the issue of hazing, LNP talked with national advocate and researcher Hank Nuwer. Nuwer is a journalism professor at Franklin College in Indiana and a founding board member of HazingPrevention.org.

I think the definition is shifting. Hazing, even if silly and bizarre, was supposed to be all about welcoming newcomers. Bullying was to shame and to humiliate newcomers or others perceived to be outside the bully's peer group. Now there is sexual hazing, including rape and sodomy, which in no way can be condoned and does not in the least resemble a practice of welcoming newcomers. 

More...

The facts don't add up, many said at a meeting. Three senior football players face misdemeanor charges.

Vincent DiMartini seemed to crystallize the angry skepticism that drew more than 150 people last week to the Conestoga High School auditorium. More...

Hazing is a dangerous practice. Click More to see our infographic. More...

The first trial related to allegations of hazing at a northern Iowa high school has been scheduled for February.

WATCH VIDEO HERE. 

The Mason City Globe Gazette reports an 18-year-old accused of hazing freshmen on the Clarion-Goldfield-Dows football team recently pleaded not guilty to sexual abuse charges.

More...

Five men set to stand trial Wednesday for allegedly hazing students at an University of Alabama fraternity had their trials rescheduled to Jan. 13, according to court records.

The five charged are: Colter K. Anderson, 21, Dallas, Tx.; Hunter Lee Wagner, 20, Huntsville; Richard E. Markwalter, 20, Huntsville; and Mark Allen Powers, 20, Athens; and John Patrick Buckley, 21, Houston, Tx., 

The injured students were told to take off their socks and shoes, court records state. More...